


all the little lights

by layna_lass



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Modern AU, Zutara, aang is a veterinarian, college stuff, meaningless dribble, sokka's jokes, some sokka and suki too, toph is sassy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 16:12:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8585203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/layna_lass/pseuds/layna_lass
Summary: we're born with millions of little lights shining in the darkand they show us the wayone lights up every time we feel love in our heartone dies when it moves away-Lots of Zutara fluff but also lots of the Gaang and friendship and meaningless dribble





	

**Author's Note:**

> we were big-eyed boys, with the  
> salt on our skin, and we'd  
> throw our kites to the wind
> 
> -passenger

When she first meets him, she is a mess.

 

She’s wearing leggings and one of Sokka’s stupid t-shirts that says “I prefer my puns intended” and it's the middle of the night so her hair is a disaster and she’s fairly sure she smells like wet dog because she had to give Aang a ride to work today and _I know you’re a veterinarian Aang but for goodness sakes can’t you pass by an animal shelter just_ once _without adopting something?_ And she vaguely remembers that Sokka said something about having an engineering friend over but she doesn’t really care, because when the electricity goes out all she’s thinking about is how much, sometimes, she really could kill her brother.

 

So she stomps into the living room with her hands on her hips and snaps, “Tui and La, Sokka, when I said you could stay at my apartment I didn’t mean you could break it!”

 

Somewhere in the dark room, she hears tools clatter. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, we’re fixing it!”

 

She massages the headache pulsing behind her temples. “Do I need to remind you that the reason you’re even here is because you’ve already flooded your apartment?”

 

This elicits an indignant, “It’s not my fault I care about the environment!” despite the fact that she knows perfectly well he only built a hydroelectric power source because he thought it was cool.

 

She wants to go back to bed. She has many hours of studying for exams ahead of her, and she’ll need sleep more than anything. But she doesn’t trust her brilliantly stupid brother not to blow up her building, so she sighs and goes in search of a flashlight.

 

“What are you guys doing anyways?” she demands, digging through one of the drawers in the kitchen.

 

“Experimenting with EMPs. I bet Zuko here-” she’s found the flashlight and she hands it to him now, flicking it on, “-oh, by the way, Zuko, this is my sister Katara. Katara, this is my engineering buddy, Zuko.”

 

The beam is focused on some weird contraption that, for whatever reason, contains marshmallows, but the glow illuminates the shape of the boy next to Sokka. He clears his throat uncomfortably and says, “Uh, hi.”

 

She ignores him. “That’s great, really. Why are you using marshmallows?”

 

“Right, well that’s what I was saying. See, I bet Zuko twenty bucks that they’d be able to hold the amount of energy required for an electromagnetic pulse. It was just supposed to be a little one but I can see now that I may have gotten carried away, and, well...” He gestures lamely to the darkness and offers her a weak grin.

 

She wants to strangle him. “Can you fix it?”

 

“Yeah. Sort of. I think so, anyway.” He scratches his head. “Zuko, any ideas?”

 

Zuko, still looking exceedingly uncomfortable, shrugs. “Maybe if we flip the breaker…?”

 

Katara huffs in frustration. “My landlord is the only one who can touch it, and it’s the middle of the night.”

 

“Then I guess all we can do is eat the ice cream!” Sokka’s on his feet almost before the words are out of his mouth, racing towards the kitchen.

 

“Sokka!” she rages. “It’s _November_! I depend on electricity for heat! Do you want us to freeze to death?”

 

“You could crash at my apartment,” Zuko offers.

 

Katara would give him a wary eye, but Sokka took the flashlight with him, so the only illumination comes from the faint glow of streetlights and the moon through her windows. “No offense, but I just met you.”

 

“It’s better than freezing to death,” he points out, rather rudely she thinks but doesn’t say.

 

“We won’t freeze.” She rolls her eyes, even though he can’t see her, and begins busying herself with lighting candles. “We grew up in the South Pole, we’ll be fine.”

 

“Yeah, plus Katara always keeps an obscene amount of blankets around.” Sokka returns with his flashlight balanced on three cartons of ice cream, and Katara recoils as the beam rolls toward her.

 

“Ugh, would you get that thing out of my face?” she complains, holding a hand up to shield her eyes.

 

“Wow, somebody’s grumpy,” he notes, moving it. She doesn’t miss the sly grin that slips across his face when he adds, “I guess you could say I'm seeing you in a bad light.”

 

She and Zuko groan in unison, which surprises her, but then, he’s probably had to deal with as many bad jokes as she has.

 

“Sokka, I swear, any more of that and you’ll be homeless,” she threatens, blowing out a match.

 

He plops on the couch and doesn’t heed her for a second. “Chill out, Katara. No need to blow a fuse.”

 

Zuko mutters something like, “For Agni’s sake,” and she turns to agree, but is stopped short when she really sees him for the first time. He’s tall, much taller than her, with a sort of lean and wiry build she’d expect from a runner, not an engineer. His shaggy hair is an inky black, starkly contrasting his pale skin, and he’s undeniably handsome, so she sort of feels ashamed that what she’s really looking at is the burn over his left eye. Angry red skin stretches from over his eyebrow down to the middle of his cheek, puckered at the edges, but not harming his eye. She wonders how he got it, but then he catches her looking and her cheeks turn bright red because it’s rude to stare, especially at disfigurations, though it really doesn’t detract from his looks.

 

“Just give me the cookies ‘n cream, you big dork,” she grumbles to her brother, sitting on the floor at his feet.

 

A surreptitious peek through her lashes reveals that Zuko’s frowning at her. Even though she kind of deserves it, she feels put off, and glares back at him.

 

“You want Mint Chocolate Chip?” Sokka offers, already having claimed Rocky Road.

 

Zuko tears his glower away from Katara and shakes his head. “I should get home.”

 

“Hey hey hey, aren’t you forgetting something?” Sokka holds his hand out for the money, but Katara slaps it back down.

 

“You’re not getting paid for breaking my electricity,” she says sternly. “If anything, Zuko should be paying me.”

 

“OK fine, we’ll split it half-and-half,” Sokka concedes, but she’ll have none of it.

 

“Sokka!” she snaps. “He’s not paying you.”

 

He lolls his head back and lets out a long, suffering sigh. “ _Fiiiiiiiiiiine_.”

 

She looks back up at Zuko, who’s grabbing his jacket and keys off the coffee table. “It was nice to meet you,” she says, though she doesn’t really know if it was or not.

 

“Yeah,” he replies gruffly. “Sorry about the….” He waves his hand at their device, and then he’s gone. She doesn’t miss the fact that he didn’t say it was nice to meet her too.

 

“Well he was… pleasant,” she ventures.

 

Sokka laughs. “He’s a grumpy little thundercloud who could out-grouch Oscar the Grouch. But that’s mostly because he’s painfully awkward and has absolutely zero social skills. He’s not so bad once you get to know him.”

 

Katara shrugs, and digs a spoon into her ice cream. She doesn’t really plan to get to know him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you have any suggestions for cute Zutara or Gaang things, feel free to share XD And sorry if I sound like I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to engineering, because I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to engineering


End file.
